Apr 3, 2008

Hey people! I had a few minutes to spare today so I thought I'd write about a cool program I recently discovered. You long time readers all know that I am always down with free Anti virus software. I have written about some of my favorites like Comodo, AVG, Avast! etc.

There is another one that I may have only mentioned in passing. You probably have heard of it, as it is pretty well known. It is called ClamWin, and is based off of the original ClamAV that was originally a port for 'Nix systems. It has a really strong detection rate, and cleans up most anything that is out there. The one draw back to it is its lack of real-time on-access protection.

Now if you read their forums, and FAQ's they say that they are working on getting on-access scanning in on the next version which is due out later this year. In the meantime the best thing you can do is to schedule frequent scans of your files. Well, at least, that was the old school way of protecting with ClamWin.

I am here to tell you about the new hotness. It is another open source goody that works with ClamWin to provide real time protection. It is called Winpooch. Yes, I agree, the name is funny as hell, but the protection it gives is far from funny. Here is a brief description of Winpooch from their website:

Winpooch is a Windows watchdog, free and open source. Anti spyware and anti trojan, it gives a full protection against local or external attacks by scanning the activity of programs in real time. Associated with ClamWin antivirus, Winpooch keeps safe your computer against virus.

I have replaced my anti virus at home with this and ClamWin and I have been as happy as a...well...clam ever since. You should definitely check it out!

What anti virus protection do you use now (Commercial, free, whatever)? Do you like it? Dislike it? Let me know in the comments.